I’m a bit of a sucker for a mixed reality game, as I’ve mentioned before, and Starship Home looked like it was going to be a really charming little romp. The trailer for it didn’t reveal all that much outside of being able to transform your gaming room into a spaceship, but that’s all I really needed to get excited for it.

The question is, as with all mixed reality games, is whether or not there’s actually much game to Starship Home – and, if so, is that game actually worth bothering with?

Many thanks to the publisher for the review code. If you want to purchase the game with a 10% discount, you can do so by using our affiliate link. It helps the website stay free from adverts, and is a great way to support us!

WE’RE GOING HOME
After a package is delivered to the right address – but the wrong planet – you find yourself in possession of your very own Starship Home: a kit that transforms your room into a ship capable of intergalactic travel! The intended owner isn’t best pleased with the situation, but he’s happy to help guide you through the process to help get it back into his hands.

Unfortunately, thinks don-t go quite to plan as his planet soon gets overrun by a poisonous blight that is infecting the entire galaxy, leaving things down to you to find a resolution! To unravel the mystery, you’ll end up finding clippings of infected plant life from different planets as you work to cure them of the malady and hopefully find a key to stopping the blight once at all so you can get this starship back home!

Image

Setting up your spaceship is pretty simple: the game does a scan of your room, identifying the walls and furniture, which will then allow you to place all the individual elements. These are taken from a box and placed on whichever surface you want. Pleasingly, windows can be placed on the floor and roof in addition to the walls, thus giving you additional viewpoints for your spacefaring adventure. It’s quite impressive how well it all fits, and I even tried placing some sneaky ones in the hallway just to test how cohesive everything is.

With such intricate placement, you may be wondering whether this confines you to a single room in your house for your entire journey. One of my initial tests with the game was to see whether or not changing to another location would reset your progress, but all you really need to do is re-place all the starship elements again. It takes a couple of minutes, but you’ll be back to where you were in no time. It’s all very intuitive and quick, ensuring that gameplay sessions never start with any degree of tedium. One thing I did notice was that larger rooms could lose tracking a little as some of the elements started sinking into the walls of my living room; however, once I relocated to my gaming room, those issues didn’t reoccur. I have a feeling that some of this is down to the headset tracking rather than the game, but given how easy it is to pick up and move objects, it’s not that much of a problem if it does happen.

Image

With everything all set, you’re free to start your journey into space, and I was really impressed with how well everything gels together. The airlocks opens smoothly and feels satisfying as you crank the lever and pull it open, and the various buttons on the controller interface activate ancillary ship functions – such as the ever-useful star map.

As for your adventure itself, there’s a pretty small gameplay loop that you’ll be going through over the course of about three or so hours. Travelling to a planet requires choosing it from the star chart, obtaining the energy source from the storage area, manually inserting it into the fuel chamber, and finally pulling the lever to head off to your new destination. Once you’re there, you’ll need to scan the planet’s surface for info before obtaining a special dream plant, which will eventually lead you to a new planet after you finish taking care of it.

Looking after each plant is where you’ll find the bulk of the gameplay, but before you can help it grow you’ll need to clear it of its infection. This requires hooking it up to the dream machine, so you can enter its dreams and help it feel better (somehow). Inside the dream you’ll be treated to a little minigame, which is specific to each plant. Perhaps you’ll be guiding drops of water to the plant, or maybe hunting down litter critters to satiate a carnivorous plant. I was always excited to see the next dream in store, as they were all a lot of fun – even if they never presented much in the way of challenge.

Image

I think that one of the reasons I eagerly anticipated the dream sections, was that there’s not a whole lot else to do outside of those. Looking after plants only really involves using one of two types of fertiliser and water, with the pot being upgraded to a larger one once it gets a little bigger – and everything else is mainly just your journey to getting a new plant and repeating the process once more.

That’s not to say that the game isn’t enjoyable, as I certainly found myself engaged all the way through due to its chill gameplay loop, but there’s such a fantastic foundation here for a mixed reality space exploration game that it’s a shame it wasn’t expanded a little more. Being restricted to the confines of the ship is fine, but we could have had additional ship functions that help you interact with the galaxy outside – and perhaps even have some ship-to-ship interaction via use of the airlock.

But, if you can live with the game’s limited scope, you’ll still probably get a kick out it. There aren’t many genuinely good applications of mixed reality out there that don’t feel gimmicky, and I’m pleased to say this is at least one of the better attempts. At the very least, it presents Creature with an excellent base for either expanded content or a sequel further down the line – and that would be a avery exciting prospect indeed!

VERDICT
Starship Home may unfortunately be rather limited in scope, but it’s still impressive having your room transform into your very own spaceship. Even hours into the experience, I’d still look in amazement at the beauty of the universe outside. Just don’t expect too much difficulty or content from the gameplay, and you’ll probably have yourself a wonderous experience!